Barnes & Noble has refused to stock titles from Amazon’s publishing imprint. According to a statement from B&N, the move "is based on Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent," which the bookstore claims prevents them from “offering certain e-books to our customers.” However, Barnes & Noble’s website will continue to sell books published by Amazon.
The Center for the Art of Translation has posted a video of a Lydia Davis lecture on her translation of Madame Bovary, where she explains how she used Nabokov’s marginalia from one of his copies of the book (found at the New York Public Library): “He was quite helpful, but then I trusted him too much. And I found that he wasn't really always right, so I had to back off a little bit from my utter trust.” However, Nabokov was certainly right about at least one thing: Flies walk, they do not crawl. (The audio of the entire Davis’s talk is available here.)
The New York Times profiles FSG publisher and poet Jonathan Galassi, and interviews him about his forthcoming poetry collection, Left Handed.
The Occupy Wall Street Library and Occupy Tuscon are teaming up to flood the Tucson Unified Public School District with books that were banned last year under an ordinance prohibiting school curricula “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.” The Occupy Wall Street library’s press release says: “Acting in solidarity with OccupyTucson and the students, parents, and teachers of the Tucson Unified School District we are going send copies of the banned texts to Tucson for distribution. Lots of copies. As many copies as we can find and buy.”
The upcoming March election in Russia was, until recently, deemed a sure victory for Vladimir Putin, John Lloyd writes in a multi-book review for the Financial Times. He enjoys strong popular support, stronger KGB ties, and is a “master of nostalgia, with a fine ability to render the Soviet period as one in which, granted, mistakes were made but greatness was achieved.” These days, though Putin is still the likely winner, his political future isn’t quite so clear. “Even among allies,” Lloyd writes, “the mix of policies, attitudes and enmities that has sustained the Putin regime is losing its potency."
Today in shameful procrastination memes: “shit agents and editors say.”
